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Zorg Links! Bid Your Site To The Top

You want exposure. You want backlinks. What can you, as a budding Internet entrepreneur, do? Maybe it’s time to set up some linkbait. Maybe you need to run a hot contest. Maybe you should order a ReviewMe review or purchase some text links. Or maybe, just maybe, you could bid your way to the top by getting listed on Mike Lovatt’s Zorg Links.

The Paid Web Directory

There are many free web directories on the web that you can use to get some free linkbacks to your site, but if you’re looking for added exposure and a greater audience, these may not exactly be the most effective. With Zorg Links, everyone has to pay in order to get themselves listed on the site. There’s no set rate, so what this means is that you have to outbid your competitors. At the time that I wrote this review, the top site has a bid of $380, getting featured on the front page as well as on the site-wide sidebar.

These bids are not time-restricted. By this I mean that if you fork out $381 to oust the current top dog, you get that linkback for the life of the site. It’s permanent and will not ever be removed… that is, until someone else puts in a bid for $382.

Zorg Links ranks high in Google for key terms like “bidding directory” and “bidding web directory”. The site has a good custom design which got voted the best of its kind in a recent poll on Digital Point forums. The site features many custom mods and additional content like free themes and a blog to make it more unique, provide additional resources for visitors.

A Directory of Directories?

In the sidebar, you’ll notice that all submitted listings have been placed in different categories. They’ve got categories for everything from Advertisement to Webmaster Tools and everything in between. Some categories are more popular than others and nowhere is this more evident than the categories for paid directories. Of the about 150 (or so) sites listed, 52 are in Directories [Bidding] and 40 are in Directories [Paid].

As a matter of fact, when you check out the front page of this bidding web directory, all fifteen of the top links are other web directories. Am I the only one who finds this terribly ironic?

Capitalize on the Cheap

While getting listed near the top in the directories categories can get pretty expensive, such is not the case with many of the other categories. The competition just isn’t there, so if you’re looking for a web directory with some prime real estate for your pets or shopping related site, you can pull it off with Zorg Links for less than $10. For Webmaster Tools, there is currently just a single link for a buck. And that’s a lifetime link. I’m sure we’ve got some webmasters out there that can afford to bid $2 for a link.

More Than a Linkback

In addition to getting a linkback from a PR5 site (the developers predict a PR6 with the next update, when and if that ever comes), each submitted link — you can buy one here — gets its own dedicated page on the site, which has custom META keywords and description, and SEO friendly URLs to help them rank high in the search engines. On this page, you see an Alexa graph and information regarding the number of backlinks, pages indexed, and the site’s PageRank. Below this is a series of buttons for you to submit/save that site (not its page on Zorg Links) to a range of social bookmarking services like Digg, Del.icio.us, Furl, and StumbleUpon.

Will You Really Get More Traffic?

I’m not sure. I’m no expert on the effectiveness of using a web directory to promote your site. Depending on your site’s content, there are probably cheaper ways to get some quality linkbacks too. Order up some paid posts on PayPerPost or ReviewMe, for example. Hold a contest wherein people have to link back to your site using a specific anchor text (“make money online” anyone?).

That said, because of the categorization and the bidding system, Zorg Links might be able to provide you with targeted traffic referrals, specifically from webmasters in the same or similar niche as you. If the bids haven’t gone too high, then this could be an inexpensive source of traffic.

UPDATE: Between the time that I started writing the review to the time that I put it up on the blog, several new submissions have come into Zorg Links, bumping the top link leader to $1,460. Mike Lovatt may have a winner on his hands.

Great site you got going there, you’ve still got a long way to go though, the competition is tough. But if you work hard and don’t give up you can be as successful as any of those huge bidding directories out there.

Yeah you’re right I think it helps for a few link backs but that’s about it. While some people may pay – I think only a few will actually pay anything substantial for this but it’ll be interesting to see what happens as a result of this review.

The same as to every directory that is open to more niches. The traffic is not something i would expect from a directory (with exception of some directories, but i can’t tell if this directory is a exception).

The other negative thing is that you may easily lose money on bidding. If anything else comes up in your mind, follow the list of the negative aspects bellow 😛

One of the things that might be very bad in the future is if google starts penalizing people for backlinks coming from link farm domains, I thing google already does this for FFA sites and directories might be the next one.

I assure you. Thos bids are definately not fake and neither are the links. I own Beacon-Directory. And I bid for the position I have. I have also bid on several large sites. I promise. Those bids aren’t fake.

The funny thing is that the link will not be permanent or lifetime..it will last as long as someone else outbids. Hah, not a way i would like to spend my $$ I would rather pay that amount and get listed in Yahoo Directory or get listed in many other directories for that price.

True that!
What I’d like to know, is if you’ve bid $100 and someone else bids $101, do you have to pay another $102 dollars to get ahead of them, or just $1 more because you already paid $100?

If you have to pay another $102, then it’s this is the dumbest directory I’ve ever heard of for consumers (but way to go for the guy who made it, he’s laughing all the way to the bank…well he probably is anyway 🙂

Thats a nice point. I did not thought about that either. This is a old practice on web hosting review sites and directories but never took part of it, but they have like a auction end time and it is stated for which month you will remain first. While this directory does not have a end time so the auction goes on and on and the question about paying +$1 or +$102 is something serious to take and clear before even one starts bidding.

Yikes… better be careful… He probably just charged you to enter you into 500 free link farms… What good is that going to do you? No quality, super spammy, allow anyone to submit, no review of the website. I don’t see what value that is.

I have a feeling whilst a cracking idea it’s very unsubstainable. I equate it to buying and selling companies.

All the top links are bid directory links, sure, astronomical sums of money are being thrown around. But I wager Mike has thrown around similar sums of money. I’d like to know how much profit he has actually made.

It’s 2007, directories are dead!
What you buy here is a Pagerank 5 link, that’s all.
You might get some traffic from a directory, but only until the buzz is over (so in about a month)…
Not worth the money, IMHO.

I wouldn’t say directories are over, but I don’t see this idea as being that wise a move for webmasters (buying a link). Especially when there are so many free directories that will give you a free indexable link, if your site is good.

I’m kind of agreeing with this. It may slightly help in SEO efforts, but I imagine if Google sees it as a directory… the backlink wouldn’t be as relevant as it could have been. (say it if were linked from a site that had more similar content… )

Do you really need this , when you can get a back link from a blog of PR6 eg. johnchow.com by just commenting … As easy as such … call me stingy but with wordpress top commenter plugin , i think things have become more easy ??

I’ve used directories both personally and for clients for years and I’ve never noticed an increase in PR, any referral traffic or better SERPS results. I’ve got sites listed in hundreds of directories with PR5, PR6 and PR7 yet each time the link has been worthless, no matter how SE friendly they claim to be.

I’ve had the same experience as well, the problem when it comes to high PR directories is that they tend to have a lot of links on their pages, and sharing that page’s PR with all those links is practically useless.

The other thing is directories with a few websites listed (better share of the PR) usually don’t have a PR, so its a loose loose situation.

I’m Mike, the guy who ordered this review. I wanted to clarify a few things first.

Firstly, the backlinks. Many SEO companies crawl the web looking for decent directories to submit to. They dont look at features like page rank, they look at the quality of the sites listed in the directory, and what benefits it would bring. Just look at many paid directories and you will see companies like British Airways and other big brands listed there.

The $20 it costs to submit has risen recently. I set my price based on the quality of the directory. Its not about $20 for a link, its about the quality of that link. Google has stated that webmasters buying text links is bad. They have however said webmasters are free to submit to web directories, as this is a safe way of gaining backlinks.

Look around. yahoo charges $300 for a listing there, many other paid directories charge over $50, so i consider $20 a very reasonable price.

With people trying to gain high PR links as cheaply as possible, or even for free, google is spotting this. Signature links, blog comment links, top commenters, word clouds are all being ignored.

Web directories are becoming one of the safe places to gain quality relevant backlinks to the site.

The PageRank on my site has yet to update as google is taking forever with this update. This is the reason why some of the categories have few sites listed, as some people are only prepared to pay once they see evidence of PR.

As for the listings on the homepage, they are bound to be only web directories. Its in their advantage to get listed there, as the traffic is targetted and will likely result in sales. It wouldnt be worth paying over $200 to get a recipe site listed there.

Thanks to those with the positive comments, and to Michael for writing a nice review. So far the “John Chow effect” has seen me sell a listing for $30, and my traffic rise quite a lot. In the 4 hours that analytics has been tracking today, i already have more traffic than the weekend.

This is just my opinion but what is it that makes your directory different from all the others out there? I could list hundreds of PR6 directories. Like I said previously I’ve used directory listings for years from many paid/exclusive very high ranking directories and NEVER noticed any benefit to the linked website. The only 2 directories I’ve ever found to be worth anything for webmasters are Yahoo and the ODP.

If your directory really does offer some benefit (referral/PR or SERPS) then I’d sign up straight away and bring a load of clients websites with me.

Until the recent drop in SERPs, site submitted to my directory ranked high for their title text.

For example, http://www.idk.in submitted to zorg links. when his site was searched for in google, my site ranked closely to his. I am doing some nice work on the site to ensure listed sites get the maximum benefits. One of those is ranking highly in google.

This is something very recent. You will notice the major directories like alive directory and aviva have had the same problem. This happened on sunday. Seems google had an algorithm change. i am fully confident things will be normal soon.

This is normal. The valued directories are still in place. Aviva and Alive are not major directories, I have plenty of sites in both and they have made do difference in either traffic or SEO terms. It’s not just a Google thing, Yahoo also dislike paid directories. MSN takes less account of backlinks so it’s not as important.

I’m not trying to beat up on directories, paid or otherwise, it’s just from my own experience (and $1000s of Dollars) I’ve found them all to be worthless. I would really LOVE to find one that wasn’t, if that’s yours then great.

I will not condemn this, I felt it too google did have an algorithm change for sure, it usually takes a couple of days for the whole system to re-stabilize itself and I’m very confident that Zorg Links will go back to the top of the search engine results.

The average internet user has never heard of “Tyson Williams”, but that does not mean it isn’t receiving tons and tons of traffic. Directories are usually based on how much promotion is being done to them, rather than how many people know about it as a brand.

IMHO, I feel Mike may have hiked the price temporarily to take “advantage” of JC readers, picture this: he would make $10 for 10 new listings if he had the old price on, if he sells just one listing now, he makes atleast $20! It makes business sense to me to take advantage of the spike of traffic, but I think he overdid it when he did so just for us – does he think we are fools or what?!

And, the whole deal of the prices increasing (from $300 odd to $1500 odd in as little as the time it takes to complete a review), makes it all the more suspect! He might well have thought, wow, JC just accepted to review my site, let me increase the top bids a bit to make it look big!

I’m not claiming that I am sure of this, ofcourse, I have no proof whatsoever, but Mike, I’d love to hear you deny the FACTS I put across.

That’s my understanding, your link is permenant until some one outbids you that is..

“These bids are not time-restricted. By this I mean that if you fork out $381 to oust the current top dog, you get that linkback for the life of the site. It’s permanent and will not ever be removed… that is, until someone else puts in a bid for $382.”

Zorg links is a bid for position directory. Listings are shown in order of bid amount. if someone outbids you, they will just rank higher than you. No sites get removed (unless they breach the TOS in which case they get refunded)

True, with directories you get a “backlink” to your site, but what about all the new algorithms that Google and other search engines are implementing which devalue the link if it is paid for? With any web directory, don’t you think that’s obvious? You can pay a ton of money for a link in a great web directory, but statistics show that it can actually HURT your SERPs.

I used to own several web directories, but I sold them due to a drastic decline in popularity due to this very reason. This is also why I attempt to “disguise” paid links on my blog by calling them “Links of Interest” or some other similar title rather than “Paid Sponsors”.

According to Master Matt Cutt, Google is devaluing paid-link and not paid directory link. At the moment, it doesn’t looks like they had the a solution to paid-links. They can hunt down a block of link with the title “sponsor” or similar, but what if I used an image instead?

Now please show statistics that it will hurt your SERP! If it hurts SERP, I can submit all my competitors sites to directories and good-bye their ranking while I reap the reward. Google are not dumb, and they make billions out of us :twisted:. Don’t spread rumors when you had no idea what you are talking about.

It may or may not hurt but if your paid directory submission service can 1. Generate referral traffic 2. Provide any PR benefit 3. Improve overall site performance in the serps then I’d like to see some proof? I’ve used services just like yours (manual directory submission) and I’ve NEVER seen any of those benefits. If it hurts or not I can’t say but other than the ODP and Yahoo I’ve never found a directory yet than provides any benefit to webmasters.

That is your opinion. I have seem many people’s websites jump up for a targetted niche keyword where competition is low. It will never hurt your SERP result. If it can, then I can just go around and screw my competitors.

If it does drop your SERP ranking by submitting to directories, I just got myself a new service. Submit your competitor’s website to 1000 directories and watch them drop in SERP ranking 😈 . I think I’ll get 10 times more sales than I have right now.

“They can hunt down a block of link with the title “sponsor” or similar, but what if I used an image instead?”

They’ll have an even higher “link to text” ratio and be less accessible. It’s not really a long-term solution.

The company I used to work for had good advice for any customers wanting to get higher ranks, and it was that the important thing was content. If you have good content, everything else will come naturally. People will link to it, and Google will find it. Trying to keep one step ahead of search engines will just be time consuming and risky!

I would really like to see an algorithm that detects if a like has been paid or not, yes it can scan the HTML tables in search for a sponsor, paid, keyword but hey I can live with that. A simple thesaurus will do the trick, I can find hundreds of other phrases that mean the same thing and the google crawlers would never even dream that they’re paid links.

This Zorg Link Directory is really rather small, and it is based on a PHP script that anyone can buy cheap. All this Zorg-man has done is slap a site up on the Internet. And just because his site is PR is 4 or 5 (or so) does not mean that your backlinks will show up on Zorg webpages with PR greater than 0.

Submitting to Internet directories has to be the most boring activity in life — bricklaying is more fun. So if you plan on getting your links into the tens of thousands of competing directories out there on the web, then hire someone to do it for you, someone in the developing world, where the wages are cheap. That’s what the really big webmasters do: they outsource the menial aspects of marketing and promotion.

Is it just me that the pagerank on zorg-links is 0? Not that I want to make thing worse, you can’t possibly predict PR! IWEBTOOL is a SCAM! They just calculate all that backlinks you have and say good luck this is the amount of links you have and you should get this PR. That is no where near the real Google algorithm. Take iwebtool as a grain of sand.

As a brand new blogger I find it very exciting to discover tools and resources like this, especially this early on in my blogging career. Zorg is definitely something that I am going to investigate and then apply to any new blogs that I create over time.
Thanks very much

Zorg looks quite professional compared to many of the spammy directories out there. But I don’t want any links right now.

I just got slapped by Google for getting too many inbounds for a press release I submitted for my plumbing site, and I’m not on the front page for many of my keywords anymore. I’m assuming that’s the reason as I can’t see what else I did wrong.

You can’t win. If I’d paid for a heap of links instead of getting them honestly they probably wouldn’t have done a thing. Never mind, at least I got in the newspaper through the press release.

Anyway directories like Zorg don’t seem so bad. It’s the directories that add thousands of businesses without asking that I hate because it’s often them you wind up competing against for your keywords on Google.

I am looking for some guy that was either heckling John or something and John blogged about him and site him a lot of traffic. He was a newbie blogger that had just started his own name blog, and I was wanting to check it out again, but I can not seem to find it. Anyone with alittle help here?

Is there any evidence showing whether one of these backlinks actually has any effect on search engine ranking? Doesn’t Google’s algorithm automatically discount these sorts of directory links? I suppose it can’t _hurt_, but I think there are more effective ways to spend the ad dollars…

Mike the Zorg guy –
Yahoo directory charges $300 premium because it has such a good PR and reputation. Until you get that kind of PR, I wouldn’t pay $20. I may have considered it if it were below $5. I don’t think it is worth $20 from a directory of PR 0 level.

go scan my domain. you will realise i have many PR6 and PR7 backlinks, and if you know SEO well you will know google internally updates PR all the time. You will understand then that my site is not PR0, it would be PR5 or PR6 when the toolbar updates….

There are a lot of directories out there with 1000-2000 backlinks but they have only PR1 or PR2. Now don’t BS people around with PR predictor. Unless these PR predictors use the same algorithm as Google, there is no way they can be correct.

I’ve been reading through all the comments about the Zorg Links and I’m not sure if it has been answered. Say if I bid $100 for the top link and then a day later if someone pays $101 for the top link (my link will move down one position), does that mean I have to pay another $2 ($2 + the original $100 I paid) to overtake the other bid or do I have to bid another $102?

Mike does great work. Being a fixture at many webmaster forums I’ve seen zorg go from nothing to one of the bigger / more powerfully promoted bidding directories. I wonder if I’m still #1 under blogs? 😀

Either way if you re going to bid on one try and go for one that is well promoted lots of people put it up and hope for money. A) they get very little $ and b) no one visits so no one who purchases a spot gets any traffic.

I’ve gotten decent traffic from Zorg in the past, hopefully alot more after this review ;).

"How I Went From Zero to Over $100,000 a Month"

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John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man who controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the probably yo’ daddy foundation...

John Chow rocketed onto the blogging scene when he showed the income power of blogging by taking his blog from making zero to over $40,000 per month in just two years.